The 10th season of American Idol wrapped last night with a two-hour-and-seven-minute finale during which baby-faced country crooner Scotty McCreery won the big prize and Lady Gaga gave the most literal performance of her career. As expected, the show was weird — special guests included Judas Priest and Tony Bennett — but hopefully we can answer all your lingering questions right now:

Did Idol cut away from Scotty maybe kissing Lauren Alaina when the results were read?
Possibly! Business Insider points out that cameras seemed to cut away from the two finalists whenever they got close, and there was definitely a suspicious edit (visible at the :20 mark in the below video). Before McCreery even thanked the Lord, he told Ryan Seacrest, “It’s been a year since me and Lauren Alaina tried out now, me and her have been together since day one, and we’re going to stay together.” Oh, really? Confronted about the dating question after the show, they played it coy. “We’re really close friends… I don’t know about the dating part. She’s just being funny,” said Scotty when Lauren playfully told the press to confront him about their status, according to Zap2it. “She’s such a sweetheart. We’ve grown so close. It’s a special relationship we have.”

Who was in Steven Tyler’s backing band?
Well, it wasn’t Aerosmith! New judge Tyler had promised his band would perform on the Idol finale, but guitarist Joe Perry swore it wasn’t gonna happen. And the winner of this truth contest is… Joe Perry! When Tyler sat down at a white grand piano to play “Dream On,” he was backed by Stone Temple Pilots’ Robert and Dean DeLeo, drummer Marti Frederiksen and pianist Russ Irwin. Frederiksen is a longtime Aerosmith collaborator and one of the “Boneyard Boys” who help write and produce the band’s music. Irwin is best known for his 1991 single “My Heart Belongs to You,” and has been part of Aerosmith’s touring band since the late ’90s.

Who was that dude singing with Bono and the Edge?
Half of U2 were on the scene at Idol to promote their struggling $70 million Broadway musical Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark. The young guy trading verses with Bono was Reeve Carney, the 28-year-old musician who plays Peter Parker/Spider-Man in the show. He fronts a band called Carney whose other members scored a sweet gig playing in the pit orchestra for the production. Last night the trio performed “Rise Above 1,” which was produced by Alex Da Kid. The song gets a solid “meh” from us — we’d have preferred if they’d done the more U2-y “Boy Falls From the Sky.”

Where was last year’s winner?
It’s traditional for the most recent American Idol victor to make an appearance at the finale to A) pass the crown on to the new winner and B) remind America he/she is still alive. This year, though, producers didn’t let season nine Idol Lee DeWyze take the stage. “Hey guys, no I’m not performing at the Finale. I wasn’t asked to,” he tweeted. “A lot of questions so I thought I’d fill you in.”

What was the ballad Beyoncé sang?
If the super sexy song Beyoncé performed didn’t sound familiar, there’s a good reason for that — it’s brand new! “1 + 1” is the opening track on the singer’s June 28th LP 4 and a big chance of pace from her frantic first single “Run the World (Girls),” which she performed at the Billboard Music Awards earlier this week.

HOUSTON – A day after surgery to repair her skull, Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords’ doctor has dubbed her “gorgeous Gabby,” encouraged by how she looks and is communicating after an operation considered a major milestone in her recovery from a gunshot wound.

Giffords had some pain and nausea shortly after the surgery, but a scan of her brain showed the operation was successful, said Dr. Dong Kim, the neurosurgeon who performed the intricate, three-and-a-half-hour procedure.

She’s doing so well that doctors are beginning bedside rehabilitation therapy, and say she’s on the path to being released, although they won’t discuss a timetable.

Giffords’ head was shaved for the surgery, and she’ll be able to stop wearing the cumbersome helmet that was protecting her head from further injury. Kim described her new look as “cute.”

“I started calling her gorgeous Gabby today,” Kim said at a hospital news conference Thursday. “She hasn’t looked in the mirror yet, but as soon as she does she’ll be very pleased.”

Doctors had to remove a piece of the congresswoman’s skull to allow for her brain to swell after she was shot in the head four months ago at a political meet-and-greet in Tucson, Ariz. Six people were killed in the attack and thirteen others injured, including Giffords.

To replace the missing bone, Kim attached a piece of molded hard plastic with tiny screws.

Giffords’ astronaut husband, Mark Kelly, who is orbiting Earth on the space shuttle Endeavour, said he kept in touch with his mother-in-law, his identical twin brother Scott, and his wife’s chief of staff throughout the surgery, and that he is pleased with how it went.

“She’s doing really well. Everything went as planned,” Kelly said in a TV interview from space. “Her neurosurgeons are very happy, she’s recuperating and she’s actually getting back to therapy today. So it went really, really well.”

Kelly also said that Giffords will receive outpatient care in Houston, meaning she will remain away from her home district in Arizona for the start of the next phase of her recovery. “We don’t know exactly when that is going to be, but I’m looking forward to that.”

Giffords also had a permanent shunt placed in the skin behind her ear to drain spinal fluid from her brain and into her abdomen, Kim said. It will relieve pressure from fluids that often build up in patients with a brain injury, but it’s not visible and many patients forget they have one, doctors said.

The surgery carries a 5 to 10 percent risk of infection, Kim said. There are still some remaining bullet fragments in Giffords’ brain that will not be removed because doing so could make her condition worse, he said.

Once Giffords returns to TIRR Memorial Hermann in Houston from the nearby Memorial Hermann-Texas Medical Center where she underwent the surgery, the shunt and the skull surgery will further help her recovery.

“We’re optimistic that when she comes back we’ll see a lot of changes that will allow us to upgrade the rehabilitation,” said Dr. Gerard Francisco, the head of Giffords’ rehabilitation team.

KABUL, Afghanistan – Hundreds of protesters, angered by an overnight NATO raid that they believed had killed four civilians, clashed on Wednesday with security forces on the streets of a northern Afghan city. Eleven people died in the fighting, government officials said.

The demonstrators fought with police and tried to assault a German military outpost in the city of Taloqan, the capital of Takhar province, the officials said, adding that some 50 were injured.

The protest was triggered by an overnight NATO raid on the outskirts of the city. The coalition said four insurgents died in the operation and that two others were detained.

Night raids targeting insurgents regularly stir up controversy in Afghanistan, where angry residents often charge the next day that international forces go after the wrong people or mistreat civilians as they search compounds. Success by NATO in reducing civilian casualties and agreements to conduct night raids alongside Afghan forces have not managed to stem the tide of accusations.

Adding to the confusion, it is often difficult to know who is a militant in insurgent-heavy areas, where entire villages are often allied with the Taliban or other groups.

On Wednesday, hundreds of people gathered on the road from Gawmal to Taloqan and carried the four bodies — two men and two women — on platforms as they marched into the city. They shouted insults at Afghan President Hamid Karzai and the United States as they pumped their fists in the air.

“Death to Karzai! Death to America!” they yelled. Officials estimated there were about 1,500 demonstrators.

The crowd started looting shops and throwing stones at a small German base in the city. Police were out throughout the city trying to calm the crowd, Taqwa said. Gunfire could be heard in a number of neighborhoods and troops at the German outpost shot off rounds in an attempt to disperse the crowd outside their walls.

The German military said in a statement that the demonstrators threw hand grenades and Molotov cocktails into the base, injuring two German soldiers and four Afghan guards. The German soldiers, one of whom was lightly injured and one somewhat more seriously, were both in stable condition, the military said.

At least 11 protesters were killed in the fighting, and 50 people were wounded — some of them police officers, said Faiz Mohammad Tawhedi, a spokesman for the Takhar government.

The raid late Tuesday killed two men and two women who were inside a home in an area known as Gawmal, provincial Gov. Abdual Jabar Taqwa said. He said that no one in his government was informed about the raid and that NATO acted unilaterally.

Provincial police chief Gen. Shah Jahan Noori said he had not been informed of the operation and said none of his officers were involved. Army officials could not be reached immediately for comment.

NATO confirmed it killed four people, two of them women, but said all were armed and tried to fire on its troops.

One of the women was armed with an assault rifle and tried to fire on the troops, NATO said. The other woman was armed with a pistol and pointed her gun at the security force as she was trying to escape the compound.

It is rare for women to be part of an insurgent fighting force in Afghanistan, but not unheard of. There have been cases in the past of women fighting with the insurgency, including as suicide bombers.

NATO said the raid was conducted by a “combined Afghan and coalition security force” and an alliance spokesman said that the governor was contacted ahead of the raid.

“It is standard practice in Takhar province to contact the Afghan provincial leadership prior to an operation. In this case, calls were placed to the provincial governor six times prior to the operation,” Maj. Michael Johnson said.

“We are aware of the claims of civilian casualties, and are looking into them,” Johnson added.

President Hamid Karzai sided with the Afghan officials. He issued a statement condemning the night raid as having killed four members of a family, and said it was not coordinated with Afghan forces.

“Despite repeated warnings that have been issued by President Karzai to top these uncoordinated NATO operations, it seems these types of operations still have not stopped,” Karzai’s office said in a statement.

He said the Afghan people should protest without turning to violence, but also said that the blame for the protest lies with NATO.

NATO said that the raid targeted a man working with the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan — an insurgent group that is powerful in the north. The man was involved in arms trafficking and building explosives, NATO said. The alliance did not say if he was killed or captured.

In the south, meanwhile, a NATO service member died Wednesday in an insurgent attack, the military coalition said. NATO did not provide further details or the service member’s nationality.